


you know your lines

by Carmarthen



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo e Giulietta - Ama e Cambia il Mondo, Romeo et Juliette - Presgurvic
Genre: Backstory, Character Death, Clairvoyance, Experimental Style, Gen, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, POV Second Person, Present Tense, Subtext, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You're going to die in your best friend's arms. And you play along because it's funny, because it's written down, you've memorized it, it's all you know.</i> - "Planet of Love," Richard Siken</p><p>What if Mercutio sees the future?</p><p>(Based on the 2013 Italian musical version, <i>Romeo e Giulietta - Ama e Cambia il Mondo</i>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you know your lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cinaed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/gifts).



> This is inspired by Richard Siken's "[Planet of Love](http://isoughtmysoul.tumblr.com/post/10731413523/richard-siken-planet-of-love)," from _Crush_ , with some hints of the [Queen Mab song](http://lyricstranslate.com/en/la-reine-mab-je-reve-queen-mab-i-dream.html) as well. 
> 
> I tried something a bit more experimental than usual here (this is only the second time I've attempted second person!) and I'd be really interested if people feel it works or not.

Imagine this:

You are ten years old, sick with a fever, fretful at the fussing of your nurse. Your tongue tastes bitter with the herbs they force you to drink.

You sleep.

You dream.

You are in a forest. It is cool here, dark and moist and green, nothing like the musty air of your sickroom. A white doe steps into the clearing, sunlight all around her like the halo around the Virgin Mary in the family chapel. She is so delicate and graceful her hooves scarcely dent the moss, and you hold your breath, afraid to frighten her away.

But there is an arrow in her breast, staining her fur scarlet, dripping dark stains that spread and spread like the sin the priests speak of, and she looks at you with your mother’s eyes, wide and soft and long-lashed. It is your mother lying there, pale and weak against the lush green grass. “Mercutio,” she says, and reaches for you with one slim hand. “Mercutio….”

You wake screaming, your throat hoarse. They drug you again. This time you do not dream.

When you are twelve, your mother dies in a hunting accident: a man-at-arms who swears he saw a deer, a horse that turned the wrong direction. She bleeds out against the green, green grass and you bite your knuckles until they bleed, remembering a fever-dream from long ago.

* * *

Imagine this:

Your younger cousin Paris has been induced to climb a tree, although he is afraid of heights. He has been induced to climb this tree by your own quicksilver-swift, honey-sweet words, a new and heady power you have only begun to explore.

“Help me down, Mercutio,” he cries in his soft little voice, a bird’s voice, not the voice of a boy who should grow up to be a count, as you—youngest son, wild son, superfluous son—will not. “Please.”

The branch breaks, of course, and you scream.

You scream and the branch breaks.

No one notices that you scream and the branch breaks.

Paris, to your good fortune, is only bruised; your father thrashes you, but not hard.

* * *

Imagine this:

You have the Capulet boys cornered in an alley, you and your Montague friends, Tybalt pacing and snarling like the little tomcat he is. It’s all good sport, a little blood before midday and then a siesta in the heat of the day.

“Take care,” you say, blowing Tybalt a kiss that makes his eyes widen with anger and his cheeks flush, his chest puff out like a strutting gamecock. “Take care, little prince of cats, lest you look too long and lose an eye in the looking.” 

You draw your fingertip down over your right eye without thinking, by instinct, as the words have come, but Tybalt has his dagger drawn and there is no time to wonder at their origin.

At the end of the scuffle, everyone is bleeding a little, but Tybalt’s face is a mask of red rage, his eye already swollen shut from a lucky swipe of Abraham’s blade. That strange jester of his looks at you as if he’d like to cut your heart out and eat it, like a lion would devour his prey.

Perhaps, you think as you watch the Capulets slink away, Abraham and Balthasar slinging taunts after them, Tybalt will lose the eye.

You never meant for anyone to be truly hurt.

* * *

Imagine this:

Verona is in flames, fire licking at church walls, gardens flaring into flower and as swiftly to black ash that whispers away on the wind. It smells like the sewer; it smells like burnt flesh. It is the same above as below: this is only a preview.

Dog packs snarl and snap in the streets, fangs bloodied, fur singed—men snarl and snap in the streets—they are the same—dream and vision spread out before you, an endless pageant of of grim possibility.

You see your friends die in a thousand ways, by sword and fire and poison. You see Romeo and his Capulet girl, caught in an embrace as still and cold as the marble effigy on a tomb, the warmth fast fading from their smooth young arms. You see Tybalt bleed out in the square, his jester by grief transformed from man to hissing wildcat. You see your cousin Paris, harmless little Paris—

Tybalt embraces Romeo too hard, as if in substitute for crushing the breath from him, and speaks through gritted teeth:

_“But you have not yet paid for your offense.”_

You want to stop it, somehow, all of it, but most of all the vision of Romeo with sunlight all around him and scarlet on his breast, pale as the statue of the Virgin in the great cathedral. And if it means an end to the visions—well, you have been tired of those for a long time. They prick at your sleep like Queen Mab's little riders, needle away at you until your eyes are red and sore and your thoughts chase each other like will o' the wisps.

Poor, hapless Romeo.

_“I never offended you!”_

You will die for love, as you always wanted, as you always knew you would.

This is a part you can act, mad Mercutio, wild Mercutio, rushing in where none demanded him. You know these words. They fly from your tongue as sharp as glass, as rough as stone, your death sentence, but perhaps—if you are lucky—enough to avert Death’s hand from another.

For the first time, you cannot see the future, and you are terribly afraid. But it is too late to stop the words. They cannot be unsaid.

“Cold," you say, and then louder, finding your voice, until you are shouting, raw and desperate: "Vile! Dishonorable submission!” 

You’re going to die in your best friend’s arms.

That much you do know.

* * *

_Imagine this._


End file.
